The Fun Card Shop

I've had several conversations with Ebay lately regarding the viability of the DSR system and it's affect on PowerSeller discounts and haven't been overly satisfied. I wholeheartedly support honest feedback from buyers to sellers, however I don't think that Ebay has done a good job of educating buyers as to what is expected.

The process, as it stands, is to subjective and too limited. For example, with no direction from Ebay, buyers might think that 3 stars is normal and good, while 5 stars would mean that the seller hand delivered it to their home in a tuxedo. Other buyers, might simply say that 5 stars is the norm, and that any problems would mean less than 5. Too subjective. There seems to be no ryhme or reason to it.

Second, having only 5 stars makes the system very in accurate and tends to skew numbers lower than they should be. A system of 1 to 10 would provide much more accuracy and would a more realistic average. I believe it would also be more intuitive.

Lastly, at this might seem simple, but spread the stars out further. There have been many times when leaving feedback for others that I had thought I clicked the 5th star, only to have it be blank or only 4 stars. For those of you who leave a lot of feedback, I'm sure you've exprienced this before.

It just boggles the mind to have 100% positive feedback, with outstanding comments, only to run a DSR report and see that someone left 1s across the board. How exactly does that jive?

One thing they could do in the immediate, with very little effort is to remove the top and bottom 10% of all DSR BEFORE calculating discount. This way, it's removing the extremes and anomolies.

For example, you have 10 people leave DSRs, nine leave 5s and one leaves all 1s. This drops your average to 4.6! Dropping the top and bottome 10%, leaving 8 your average would be 5. That's the difference between a 20% discount and a 5% discount.

Let's make it more realistic: 100 DSRs
80 5s, 15 4s, 3 3s, one 2, one 1. The average is 4.72, round to the nearest 10th = 4.7 discount 5%
drop the top and bottom 10% leaving 70-5s and 10-4s. The average is 4.88, round to the nearest 10th = 4.9 discount 20%

I realize that the discount is an incentive. However, having written many sales goals and commission structures in my time as a corporate manager, I've learned that goals have to be attainable and fair. I don't want to earn my 20% discount by accident or whim. I do an awesome job by my customers and take care of them with excellence.

The efficacy of the DSR system is severely hampered by these easily fixed problems. It doesn't help buyers, because it ends up costing them more for items b/c Powersellers can't offer as big a discount; and it doesn't benefit the PowerSellers for much the same reason.

I've been told that these suggestions have been passed up the chain and that they're looking in to it. I tend to believe them and think that Ebay really does desire for the DSR to function properly.
Thanks for your time!

Luke